Business

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We’ve just about covered it all in this Sustainable Business series. 

We’ve covered why sustainable business is important. We’ve defined what a (truly) sustainable business is. We’ve shared examples of sustainable businesses out in the world. 

Finally, we’re going to cover what needs to be done. 

In this essay, we’ll be specifically covering how businesses can be more sustainable and what we, as consumers, can do to push businesses to make these changes faster. 

Let’s start with the business side of things.

What Businesses Can Do 

I’ve interviewed a lot of leaders in the space of sustainable business as a product of hosting The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast. I’ve nearly surpassed 200 interviews!  

When discussing where the greatest opportunities are to adopt more sustainable models, here’s what has most commonly come up in conversations:

Measure the Carbon Footprint

We’ve seen plenty of “Net Zero” pledges as of late, whether that’s from the Amazons of the world or businesses of a much smaller size.

The first step in achieving “Net Zero,” though, is to know what the current net is. 

And of course, I could just say that all businesses need to reduce emissions wherever possible (because they do), but the first step in reduction is measuring how much you are emitting. 

As we mentioned in a previous essay, there are organizations that are helping businesses do just that (Climate Neutral or We are Neutral). 

These organizations will also help businesses find where they should prioritize their reduction efforts. Step #3 for the Climate Neutral Certification process is to build your reduction plan after you’ve offset what you’re currently emitting.

Map the Supply Chain

For those that aren’t familiar with this, a supply chain is the sequence of activities that allows a company to deliver its products or services to the end consumer. 

Believe it or not, there are companies who can’t claim to know exactly where all their materials come from and exactly who touches them before they get to you. 

This is typically a greater issue for companies that manufacture physical products. They might not know exactly where their manufacturers (typically abroad) get the materials to make their goods, or what their labor conditions are like. 

More ethical and responsible trade and labor practices begin with complete transparency. 

This, for example, is a major issue in the fashion industry. That’s why the nonprofit Fashion Revolution created the Fashion Transparency Index in 2014.

The Fashion Transparency Index reviews and assesses how much information the world’s largest fashion brands disclose around their social and environmental efforts. 

They believe that the more information brands are required to share publicly, the more they’ll take action to clean up their supply chain (from both a labor and environmental standpoint).

Reallocate B2B Spending & Advertising

Businesses spend a TON of money just to run themselves. Of course, there are salaries, but then there are also their suppliers, their software tools, and their design, marketing, and recruiting agencies. 

The business-to-business (B2B) economy is actually larger than the business-to-consumer (B2C) economy. 

It’s important to know not just what product a business delivers to the retail shelves, but also what they did (and who they spent money with) to get it there, right?

This is why the B Impact Assessment (addressed in the last post) has a question that asks businesses whether or not they “screen or evaluate Significant Suppliers for social and environmental impact.” 

If businesses take an analysis of every company they spend money with, they can see what other ethics, values, and practices they are supporting. Our company, Grow Ensemble, spends money with 20–30 different companies each month!

Let’s take a look at an example here. 

In 2020, Patagonia decided to pull all their advertising from Facebook. In a recent statement, CEO Ryan Gellert stated:

“Patagonia stopped all paid advertising on Facebook platforms in June 2020 because they spread hate speech and misinformation about climate change and our democracy. We continue to stand by that boycott 16 months later.” 

Because they believe Facebook’s business model and practices are disruptive and corrosive, Patagonia has since gone on to call on other companies to do the same: divest Facebook of their advertising spending. 

Patagonia acknowledges the impact of where they spend their marketing dollars, not just on the number of sales, but for what it says about who their brand is supporting.

Pay Workers a Living Wage 

By definition, a business cannot be sustainable if its employees cannot live off the wages that they make. If a business can’t afford to pay living wages, then they might need to change their business model. 

If a business can’t afford to pay living wages, then they might not have a sustainable business model. 

In the U.S., as a direct result of low wages, public assistance programs spend $152.8 billion dollars a year. 

Poverty is expensive. It’s expensive both for the individual experiencing it and for the community that they live in. 

We cannot expect to get people to care about things like climate change and living more sustainably if they can’t afford the necessities for themselves and their families (while also still working a job). 

As Paul Hawken, environmentalist and author of the book Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation says, 

“The Climate Crisis is not a science problem. It is a human problem…If we are going to engage the bulk of humanity to end the climate crisis, the way to do it is counterintuitive: to reverse global warming, we need to address current human needs, not an imagined dystopian future.” 

And for every $1 per hour raise that those in the bottom 60% of earners receive, spending on government assistance programs decreases by roughly $5.2 billion. 

Raise wages, make public spending more effective, and allow people to think about more than just meeting their needs.

Similar questions are asked about a company’s water usage or energy usage. Are they recording it? Do they have plans and objectives to mitigate and reduce usage? Are their facilities/offices run off renewable, more sustainable energy sources?

Take Responsibility for the End-of-Life 

This should be the standard. Businesses manufacturing physical products should consider what happens to their product after its useful life is over. 

The majority of waste is created when we don’t reuse materials that we’ve taken the energy and resources to manufacture. 

This is why single-use plastic is so bad. Plastic is an extremely durable material and once created it can potentially have a long, useful life. Used once and disposed of, however, that plastic will most likely end up in landfill or in inefficient recycling processes. 

MUD Jeans, a circular denim company based in the Netherlands, created a “Lease a Jeans” model to state that they, the company, is responsible for the product when the consumer is done with them.

And our friends at Preserve have begun to create their products from plastics reclaimed from waterways and ocean coastlines—taking accountability for other products’ “End-of-Life.”

Be Transparent (VERY Transparent!)

The most sustainable businesses that I know of are extremely transparent and diligent in publicly documenting their social and environmental progress. 

If you dig through enough of these companies (I’ve spent time researching well over 1,000 of these brands), you start to see who stands out. 

A Good Company, a Swedish sustainable e-commerce company, has mapped out every single one of their factories on an interactive map and documented in extreme detail how they procure the materials used to manufacture their products.

This is all easily accessible for anyone and everyone on their website: AGood.com.

Don’t Advertise. Advocate for Change

And lastly—a bit more intangible, but important in principle—businesses need to see this movement towards more sustainable practices as a critical and essential change for the good of the planet.

Not a marketing opportunity. 

This all connects to what we were discussing at the beginning of this series: it’s important that we define what a sustainable business is and what a sustainable business does, because there’s a risk of the term being co-opted purely for the sake of selling more products. 

Businesses on the path to sustainability shouldn’t scream “Hey, look how sustainable we are!” They should instead use their marketing and communication strategies to do what we’ve described above: 

1. Take responsibility 
2. Measure, trace, improve, and report on what they can
3. Be transparent and share their progress publicly

In turn, by being a true voice for change, not just another timely marketing campaign, I do believe that those businesses will be rewarded by the marketplace. 

Before we wrap up here, let’s talk about what can be done from the consumer side to push businesses to make the changes we described above. 

What Consumers Can Do 

Business. Government. Consumers. There are arguments about who is responsible for making change, but the reality is that it’s all of us. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment in the world we live in right now. 

We just each have different responsibilities. 

As a consumer, here are a few things I believe are most impactful if we want to be mindful about how we make purchases and encourage businesses to make meaningful changes towards sustainability.

Do Your Research

We can’t all spend hours doing research just to find which are the most sustainable socks to purchase (that’s why it’s our job at Grow Ensemble), although a little research can go a long way. 

There’s a difference between hours of research and taking a few minutes to review what a potential purchase might say about your values. 
Look for a company’s certifications. Certifications aren’t the end-all-be-all, but they are typically a signal of a business’ larger commitment to “sustainability” generally.

Certifying as a B Corporation or Climate Neutral, for instance, isn’t easy. While those certifications aren’t perfect, the company has to make a large commitment to gain and retain them.

These are just a handful of certifications you can look for.

Also, see how well a company documents their social and environmental efforts. Are they like A Good Company that I shared earlier? Good, that stuff is hard to fake!

Stop Supporting Monopolies 

Do we want to live in a world run by Amazon? Or do we want to live in a world that supports billions of expert craftspeople, chefs, musicians, artists, educators, and artisans? 

Yes, Amazon has brought a lot of small business people into the market who might otherwise not have been able to access such a large sea of buyers. 

However, the through-line here is…Amazon. It’s hard for us to advocate for Amazon to change while at the same time celebrating 2-day shipping as some sort of groundbreaking innovation!

What’s Amazon’s real incentive to change any of their behavior if 1) they aren’t forced to, and 2) customer behavior doesn’t change? 

I believe that supporting small businesses creates a much more interesting, diverse, and rich culture. 

When you travel, do you look for local coffee shops, restaurants to try, bookshops, and boutiques, or do you hustle to find the closest Target? 

I’m guessing the former. 

If that’s what you find interesting, perhaps even want more of in the world, shouldn’t your purchases support that? 

I think small businesses are beautiful.

Be Vocal 

As well as beautiful, small businesses are also accountable. 

The great thing about seeing who actually runs a business you love, is that you might have the opportunity to chat with them. 

And no, this is different from the “celebrity” that Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg have. 

Could you get a hold of Jeff Bezos if you had a problem with Amazon?

I don’t think so.

If there are questions or concerns that you have about a business, reach out to them. Either on social media or an email, a small business has someone checking and responding to those inquiries thoughtfully. 

The best businesses (ones we’d call “sustainable”) are seriously considering the information you relay to them in deciding how they change and adapt moving forward. 

Sustainable Business Becoming the Norm

Sustainable business will at some point just be “business.” 

It kinda has to be, for the sake of our planet…

While this may seem like a behemoth of a task, there are plenty of bright spots to look to. 

This—finding the bright spots—has been one of the greatest joys of doing the work that I’ve done with Grow Ensemble. 

And thankfully, I’m seeing more of these bright spots every day… 

I hope you enjoyed this series on Sustainable Business, and if I haven’t heard from you yet, I’d really love to. 

Is there something you wanted covered that wasn’t? Are there questions you still have? 

Let me know with a comment below.

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Welcome back again to my Sustainable Business 101 series. 

We’ve covered why sustainable business is important, what a sustainable business is, and what some examples of sustainable businesses operating in the world are. 

Today we’re getting a bit more granular.

We’re going to talk about the practices that make a sustainable business, well, actually sustainable. 

To do so, we’re going to lean on an excellent tool for “measuring” the impact of a business, the B Impact Assessment.

The B Impact Assessment is a tool, created by the nonprofit organization B Lab, that allows businesses to put a “number” (or an “Impact Score”, as they call it) behind their social and environmental impact. 

Using the tool, businesses assess their current impact, see how they compare to other similar businesses, and ultimately, build a plan around improving the score they received. 

If a business is so interested, once they’ve met the minimum required Impact Score (80), they can submit for certification to officially become a member of the Certified B Corporation community.

So, jumping back in here…What are the practices of a sustainable business? 

There are two levels here. At a high-level, sustainable businesses: 

1. Measure their “impact”
2. Assess where their greatest opportunity for improvement is
3. Improve
4. Repeat

B Corps and other businesses use that B Impact Assessment to continuously go through the above 4-part exercise. 

At the next level, there are the specific policies and day-to-day practices that a sustainable business takes on. 

Again, using the B Impact Assessment as a guide, they’ve identified four overarching Impact Areas: Governance, Community, Environment, and Customers.

Let’s define each and look at specific examples of practices and policies that fall underneath each.

Governance 

The Governance Impact Area assesses a company’s mission, ethics, transparency, and internal/external accountability. 

Assessment questions in this Impact Area include:

• Does the company publicly share information about its social and/or environmental performance on an annual basis?” 

Companies like Oliver Russell, Patagonia, All Good Products, and Dr. Bronner’s produce annual “Impact Reports,” sharing their improvements/shortcomings on various social and environmental business practices.

• “Separate from a mission statement, what has your company done to legally ensure that its social or environmental performance is a part of its decision-making over time, regardless of company ownership?”

If available in their state, province, etc., companies will adopt a benefit corporation legal status. This ensures that a company’s social and environmental mission is preserved, regardless of the changes in ownership. 

If not incorporated as a benefit corporation, a company is at risk of legal threat from investors if their pursuit of some public good comes at the expense of financial performance. 

Read more on this with our post What is a B Corp, or my friend Russ Stoddard’s post How Do You Tell a B Corp from a Benefit Corporation?

• “What information does the company make publicly available and transparent?”

This question again focuses on transparency as it relates to social and environmental performance, but as well, financial performance—or who/what entities possess ownership in a company. 

Companies might choose to use an Open Book Management style where employees can all visibly see the financial performance of the company, incomes, and expenses, salaries, etc. 

This level of transparency and accountability is what ensures businesses that strive to be sustainable (like Certified B Corporations) are in fact walking the walk.

Community 

The Community Impact Area assesses a business’s social and economic impact on the community (or communities) in which it operates. 

Assessment questions in this Impact Area include: 

• “How does your company take part in civic engagement?” 

The possible answers are things like: financial (or in-kind) donations, community use of company facilities, advocacy for social or environmental progress, pro bono work, and more. 

• “What was the percentage of per capita worker time donated as volunteer, community service, or pro bono time in the reporting period?” 

The question asked companies to report what percentage of total work time was allocated towards community service or pro bono time on a scale of 0% – 5%+. 

• “What characteristics apply to the financial institution that provides the majority of your company’s banking services?” 

There are plenty of ways in which a company can make an impact with seemingly standard business operations. This question, on who a business banks with, is an example of that. 

The B Impact Assessment awards points for companies using banks that are Certified CDFI (Community Development Financial Institutions), credit unions or cooperative banks, members of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values, or as well, Certified B Corporation banks.

Three examples of Certified B Corp banks

• “What are your company’s policies regarding independent contractors that do not work for the company greater than 20 hours per week for longer than a 6 month period?”

Speaking to labor points, the Assessment questions how a company manages their relationships with part-time contractors. Are they paid a living wage? Can contractors submit feedback to the company? 

These points ensure that contractors are treated fairly and respectfully.

Environment 

The Environmental Impact Area assesses how a company manages their environmental impacts, as well as energy and resource uses.  

Assessment questions in this area include: 

• “Are your company’s products/services or processes structured to restore or preserve the environment[?]…”

One of the first questions asked in this section is whether or not the core of what the business does or sells is something that was constructed to “restore or preserve the environment.” 

Let’s take a specific example. 

Pela manufactured the world’s first compostable phone case. Pela made these cases out of an innovative “Flaxstic material” that’s designed to compost in under 6 months from its end of life.

This, as an alternative to the conventional plastic phone cases that won’t degrade or compost, ever… 

Pela manufactured their cases in this creative way as an alternative to the typical practices of the phone case market. This is what makes Pela’s model an “Environmental Business Model.” 

• “How does your company manage its greenhouse gas emissions for at least Scope 1 and 2?”

This question asks: what’s the company’s carbon footprint? And, what are they doing about it? 

To achieve the highest score here, companies need to be monitoring and recording their emissions, setting targets to reduce those emissions, and ultimately, achieving “carbon neutrality,” where the company is offsetting as much carbon output as they are producing. 

Companies will turn to organizations like Climate Neutral or We are Neutral to receive support with measuring, reducing, and offsetting their carbon emissions.  

You might even begin to see the Climate Neutral label on products out in the world.

Similar questions are asked about a company’s water usage or energy usage. Are they recording it? Do they have plans and objectives to mitigate and reduce usage? Are their facilities/offices run off renewable, more sustainable energy sources?

Customers 

Finally, the Customers Impact Area evaluates what sort of relationship that the company keeps with its direct customers.  

Assessment questions in this area include: 

• “Do any of your company’s products/services address a social or economic problem for your customers and/or their beneficiaries?”

Similar to the Environmental Impact area, this section questions whether there’s a direct social impact at the core of what the business offers to the market. 

These can be services that offer clean water and electricity to those who haven’t had access, or services that improve financial outcomes for low-income individuals, or even products/services that have an educational component, such as independent media (like Grow Ensemble!). 

There are additional questions as to how a company manages and monitors the outcomes of their customers. Does the company measure customer satisfaction? Do they share that publicly? Do they monitor the impacts that their products have on customers?

Sustainable Business Practices – What’s it Matter? 

Mind you, I’m just briefly summarizing all that’s included in the B Lab’s B Impact Assessment. 

It’s quite extensive and can take companies extended periods of time to even gather the information necessary to adequately answer the questions. 

Walking through a few of the examples of these sustainable business practices is in effort to show you the amount of rigor through which these types of businesses assess themselves, look to mitigate and remove any negative impacts, and of course, pursue a verifiably positive impact with their products and the operation of their business. 

Of course, these businesses aren’t doing this because they have to. It’s because they’ve committed to (measurably) using their businesses as a force for good. 

From the policies and business models to the overarching methodology and focus to the continual improvement, we can see major differentiators between those who are truly sustainable businesses, and those who are not. 

The B Lab’s B Impact Assessment might not be the only means to measure and assess what makes for sustainable business practices, however, I do believe it’s the best one that is currently available. 

If you’d like to read more about the B Corporation Certification and all that’s included, I recommend visiting the B Impact Assessment website directly, or picking up a copy of the B Corp Handbook. 

With a clearer understanding of what practices and standards a “sustainable business” adheres to on a day-to-day basis, we’ll talk next about where the greatest opportunity is for businesses to be more sustainable as well as, how, from a consumer perspective, businesses can be pushed to make these changes much faster.

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If you’ve come to believe that Amazon, Walmart, or Apple are “sustainable companies,” I’m sorry, but I think you’re wrong. 

Or, you should check the “sponsored by” section for whatever media publication you read that on…  

As part of hosting The Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast, I’ve interviewed nearly 200 business leaders in the space of social impact and sustainability. 

I’ve learned that the most sustainable companies are doing much more than just going “green,” they’re doing much more than just offsetting or mitigating a negative impact. 

They’re actively making positive social and environmental impacts core to the way they do business. 

This post highlights 14 truly sustainable companies so that you too can learn what it looks like to use business as a force for good. 

The Top 14 Most Sustainable Companies

1. tentree 

First, we have tentree. 

As tentree’s CEO Derrick Emsley told me on our podcast, ”tentree is a tree-planting company that happens to sell apparel…” 
Since their founding in 2012, tentree has planted over 50 million trees and they’ve set the ambitious goal of planting 1 billion by 2030!

tentree selectively partners with charitable organizations around the world to plant trees. They’re also regularly visiting the sites of their projects to ensure that their tree planting programs are benefiting local communities in a variety of ways—economically as well as environmentally.    

As a result of tentree’s practices and commitment to transparency, millions of trees have been planted through their collaborations in Peru, Indonesia, Canada, Brazil, Senegal, Madagascar, and Kenya. 

And of course, tentree is committed to sustainably producing their apparel line.

tentree is advancing the fashion industry by using sustainable materials like organic cotton, hemp, recycled polyester, and TENCEL™. 

And yes—as you may have already put together with their name, tentree plants 10 trees for every purchase as they hope to make big changes accessible to everybody, everyday.

2. Tony’s Chocolonely

On a recording of our Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast, Chief Evangelist of Tony’s Chocolonely, Ynzo van Zanten, shared how Tony’s was founded by a Dutch Journalist named Teun van de Keuken after he was shocked to learn the extent of how much illegal child labor exists on cocoa farms. 

In 2003, Teun attempted to “turn himself in” for consuming chocolate that he knew was produced using illegal child labor. The public prosecutor refused to prosecute Teun. 

While he never achieved the legal recourse he was hoping for, Teun decided to lead by example. And in 2005 he produced Tony’s 100% Fair Trade, 100% Slave Free Chocolate Bars. 

Tony’s was a smash success! They quickly sold out on their first 5,000 bars. 

I think what most stands out about Tony’s is their willingness to tackle the problems of their industry head-on and to “learn in public” as they do so.

• It turned out, 100% Fair Trade didn’t mean 100% Slave Free. Tony’s launched a research project in Africa to study the cocoa supply chain deeply and determine how to improve Fairtrade Certification.  
• In 2010, Tony’s was called out for the child labor that happens in hazlenut production in Turkey—Tony’s switched producers. 
• In 2014, Tony’s discovered that Fairtrade prices aren’t enough for Cocoa Farmers—they introduced a premium that pays farmers 25% more than Fairtrade to ensure they make a living income.

And, the best part of all this? I know this because Tony’s documents these short-term failures and their responses, and evolution of their operation very publicly on their website for anyone to see. 

Why? 

They are serious about their mission to make the entirety of the chocolate industry 100% slave-free. 

That’s the reason for their tagline, crazy about chocolate, serious about people.

3. Greyston Bakery

The Greyston Bakery slogan is simple and straightforward: 

“Eat Brownies, Change Lives.”

The Yonkers, New York-based bakery and social enterprise have gained some notoriety for their “Open Hiring” policy. 

This means no background checks, no resumes, no interviews…

As the Greyston folks say, “when people say, yes, I want to work; we say yes right back.”

And this has been a policy in place with Greyston since their founding in 1982.

Best of all, they’ve since created The Greyston Center for Open Hiring, which offers training, implementation support, research, and more to ensure other interested businesses have all they need to implement this more inclusive hiring practice. 

This is just the beginning, as Greyston also offers workforce development programs, transitional housing programs, and transitional employment programs, too.

4. Patagonia

Ahhh…are we surprised? 

Patagonia has spent its near 50 years in business being at the cutting edge of what it means to be a “sustainable & environmentally conscious” company. 

As they proudly state, they “[a]re in business to save our home planet.” 

For the last 35 years, Patagonia has pledged 1% of sales to the conservation of our natural environment. 

This practice led to Patagonia’s Founder, Yvon Chouinard, co-founding 1% for the Planet so other companies could make the same contribution to environmental protection. 

Now, Patagonia is approaching over $90 million in donations to national and international grassroots, environmental groups.

You might remember…they even sued a former president to preserve national monuments in 2017! 

Patagonia has diligently reviewed, assessed, and improved the sustainability of their supply chains, and a lion share of their raw materials are either recycled or grown organically. 

They’ve also set the goal to be completely carbon neutral by 2025.

5. Allbirds

While Allbirds is a completely carbon neutral shoe & apparel company, they have the ambitious goal to become a completely zero-carbon company. 

That’s right, when companies can claim “carbon neutrality” that typically means they are offsetting whatever emissions they can reduce with carbon credits. 

Allbirds, however, hopes to emit no carbon in the first place. And, I think they are on track to get there.

Allbirds has committed to complete transparency when it comes to their carbon emissions. 

Like a nutritional facts label you see at the grocery store, Allbirds has a label attached to their shoes that shows exactly the amount of emissions that’s been produced from the making of each style of shoe.

Allbirds has also recently invested in a plant-leather producer that can produce an alternative to traditionally manufactured leather and synthetically manufactured leather while also reducing the associated carbon footprint by 40 times! 

Allbirds shoes are wildly comfortable and, as it turns out, wildly sustainable too.

6. Bombas

Bombas abides by the bumblebee way of life: a lot of small actions make up remarkable collective achievement. 

Why? 

Well, to date, Bombas has donated over 47 million pairs of socks. This is because of their “Buy one, Give one” model, where, for every sock purchased, Bombas donates another to someone in need.

They call these 47 million+ donated socks and counting the “Greatest Socks Never Sold.” 

Because Bombas Founders, Randy Goldberg, and David Heath, discovered that socks are the #1 requested item at homeless shelters. 

They designed the socks specifically to address the needs of people experiencing homelenesses:

• reinforced seams
• antimicrobial treatment
• made with darker colors to show less visible wear

Following closely behind socks are new t-shirts and underwear as the 2nd & 3rd most requested items at homeless shelters; this explains Bombas’ recently expanded product line.

7. Dean’s Beans

He first started in coffee through the nonprofit sector, but in 1993, Dean set out to forge his own direct relationship with coffee growers around the world.

Dean Cycon, the Founder of Dean’s Beans, was previously an indigenous rights and environmental lawyer before becoming a “social entrepreneur.” 

Today, Dean’s is a USDA Organic, Fair Trade, Bird-Friendly, Certified B Corporation coffee company. 

As Dean so impactfully shared with me during our podcast recording,

“I believe that if your business is based on the suffering of others, you have no right to be in business.”

Of course, I couldn’t agree more—and Dean’s business finds itself on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. 

Dean’s Beans produces & sells “specialty coffee as a vehicle for positive change.” 

They maintain long-standing relationships with their growers, pay a fair price for the coffee beans, and redistribute profits back to the growers themselves.

Dean’s also attempts to affect sustainable change in coffee-growing regions through their People-Centered Development Programs. 

These are a variety of economic, environmental, or social developmental assistance projects that they only take on WHEN INVITED BY THE LOCAL COMMUNITIES (not governments or foreign aid agencies)!

If invited, they listen to & talk to local groups to learn about what might be holding them back from their self-identified development goals.

Then, they design the project with the local stakeholders, avoiding bringing in outside organizations/help at all costs if the local community can manage it themselves, and they fund the projects with the sales from Dean’s Beans or, Dean’s home equity loan (as he states himself). 

Now, if you look at a 5 lb bag of Dean’s Beans you’ll understand why it reads, “Brew Great Coffee, Create Real Change”.

8. Aspiration

Did you know…The four biggest banks in America lend more than $240 billion of their customers’ money to fossil fuel projects every year?!?! 

Yeah…

At the same time, every $1,000 you transfer to Aspiration has the planet-saving climate impact of 6,000 fewer miles driven by the average car. 

Why?

Well, Aspiration is an online financial institution that provides spending, saving, and investing options that allow you to put your money where your values are.

If you open up an Aspiration account (opposed to one with a traditional ‘big bank’) you can…

• Get back 5%-10% on socially conscious spending 
• Save over $300 in fees with a “pay what you feel is fair” model 
• Drive your car without hurting the planet, as Aspiration automatically offsets the carbon dioxide from every gallon of gas you purchase (if you have a “Plus” account)  
• Most importantly, feel confident that your money isn’t fueling the climate crisis, but rather trying to stop it, as Aspiration won’t just not invest in fossil fuel projects (what a crazy idea), but will actively use your money in ways that will help us avoid climate catastrophe!

9. Grove Collaborative

Grove was founded to make finding healthier & greener home essentials easier. Their membership certainly does just that. 
Grove is the first plastic-neutral retailer in the world.

This means that for every ounce of plastic you receive from Grove, they divert the same amount of plastic from the ocean through their partners at Plastic Bank. 

And, plastic neutrality isn’t the end of the road, as Grove has the goal to be completely plastic-free by 2025. 

Yes! Over the next few years, Grove has plans to remove plastic from every product they make and sell.

Not to mention, while that might be Grove’s primary focus, that’s not all—they are also involved in plenty of reforestation work as well as work to reduce their own carbon footprint. 

And, of course, their marketplace does make it very easy to find household products that are natural, cleaner, and more sustainable than traditional counterparts.

10. Leesa Mattress

Like Bombas, Leesa Mattress was founded with a similar “Buy, then Give” business model. 

Their chosen area of impact: ending childhood bedlessness. 

For every 10 mattresses sold, Leesa donates one mattress to a family in need. Leesa calls this their “1 Good Bed Promise.”

1 in 7 children in the U.S. are living in poverty. As a mattress can be one of the most expensive items of furniture to purchase for a home, children living in poverty are more likely to sleep:

• on a couch every night
• in an overcrowded bed with other family members
• or…in some cases, on the floor

Research shows that children without access to quality sleep are far more likely to drop out of school, suffer from depression, or even commit suicide. 

That’s why with the help of their network of giving partners, Leesa, a Certified B Corporation, has given over 38,000 mattresses and counting.

11. A Good Company

A Good Company’s mission is to transform mindless consumption into conscious decisions. 

A sustainable e-commerce company, A Good Company was founded in 2019 and has since expanded their product line to cover all sorts of everyday “climate positive” goods.

A Good Company calls them “Climate Positive,” because they will: 

• Offset all carbon emissions from the production of each product using carbon capture programs such as tree planting
• Go even further and make sure each “Climate Positive” product is capturing more carbon than it’s emitting

They want every product possible to be carbon negative.

For example, their waterproof stone notebook is the world’s first “climate-positive” notebook made from recycled stone. 

No wasted trees, no wasted water, no harmful chemicals.

Their mobile cases are made in Sweden from the byproduct that comes from organic linseed farming. And after use, you can either send it back to A Good Company where they’ll turn the old case into a new one for someone else, or you can plant it in the garden where it will biodegrade.

A Good Company is also extremely transparent about where and how their products are made, and in what conditions. 

You can even use their interactive map and directory on AGood.com to see for yourself! Get a world tour of A Good Company’s supply chain.

12. Thrive Market

Thrive Market was founded on a very specific mission: they wanted to make natural groceries & organic foods more accessible to everyone. 

For every Thrive membership purchased, Thrive gives a membership to a low-income family, teacher, first responder, or student. 

Thrive wanted lower prices for high-quality, highly nutritious products, to make eating better easier. It’s one of the reasons they offer a “Low Price Promise,” where they price-match with any product you find on their marketplace.

Organic, natural foods and supplements have universally been expensive, and undoubtedly exclusive as a product of that. 

While Thrive isn’t yet making the products they sell attainable by everyone, I do appreciate where they are pushing the market for organic & natural foods. 

Also, everything on their marketplace is highly vetted, supporting sustainable sourcing, farming, & fair trade practices, and you can shop by almost every categorization imaginable: 

• By certification — Like Certified B Corporation, Biodynamic, FSC, and more
• By diet — Vegan, Keto, Paleo, whatever
• By health & ingredients — Hypoallergenic, nut-free, Paraben-Free and so many more
• And EVEN by Environmental or Social Cause — BIPOC-owned Businesses, Regenerative Agriculture, Locally Sourced, Family-Owned Businesses, and more!

Thrive also has a program called “Mission Task Force”, where every six months Thrive selects new employees to spend 10% of their weekly work time on “impact-related work.” 

Thrive Market themselves just recently became a Certified B Corporation in late 2020, which makes them the “largest grocer to earn this coveted qualification.”

13. Eileen Fisher

In 1997, harsh and exploitative working conditions in the fashion industry were in the headlines—at the same time, the EILEEN FISHER team took it upon themselves to establish a “Social Consciousness Department”.

They specifically wanted to raise awareness around three values: 

1. Practicing business responsibly with absolute regard for human rights.
2. Guiding our product and practice toward sustaining our environment.
3. Supporting women to be full participants in society.

20+ years later and cumulatively 30+ years in business, you could say that EILEEN FISHER, as a sustainable clothing brand, has lived those values:

➡️ In early 2020, it was reported that EILEEN FISHER employees own 40% of the company, through an employee stock ownership plan which was started in 2006. Employees can cash that stock out when retiring or leaving the company. The company is currently valued at $400 million.

This was largely a motivation for the company to remain privately owned by Eileen Fisher herself. 

➡️ As well, the brand claims to be able to track their clothes “from field to factory”. With a visit to their website, it’s quite easy to find their list of suppliers, most having an exact address of the farm or factory, a note of the material that’s been supplied, and in some cases, an estimation of the amount of employees the supplier has. 

➡️ To date, EILEEN FISHER has not found evidence of human trafficking or slavery in their supply chain. And that’s not because they aren’t looking for it. They invite rigorous and frequent third-party audits of their supply chains as well, they conduct their own “Social Life Cycle Assessments” on their garment and material supply chains to identify where issue spots might be present. 

➡️ They’ve likewise taken environmental impact seriously for years as they’ve taken back over 1.5 million garments since 2009. These are then resold or remade into something new. They are also committed to using sustainable materials from the beginning—organic & traceable cotton, recycled polyester, nylon, and cashmere, and now regenerative wool.

It seems fitting to quote Eileen Fisher herself, here:

“We don’t want sustainability to be our edge, we want it to be universal.”

14. Avocado Mattress

And last but not least on this list, Avocado Green Mattress. 

Avocado has called out that they are on a mission to be one of the world’s most sustainable brands. They might very well be!

Avocado’s mattresses might just be the most sustainable, or “eco friendly”, on the planet:

• They don’t use toxic chemicals
• Their factories are powered by renewable energy (and are approaching zero waste)
• They’ve cared for and raised 200,000 of their own sheep
• They offer vegan alternatives
• They grow and produce their own natural latex
• They’re carbon negative
• They’re certified organic by the Global Organic Textile Standards (or GOTs)

Best part? They claim they’ve just begun on their sustainability and climate action.

Avocado is a Certified B Corporation, 1% for the Planet business member, and Certified Climate Neutral Company, and they’ve engineered their organic, natural mattresses to make for the best night of sleep you can possibly get!

Like all the other companies we’ve listed here, they’re setting the standard for what it means to be a “sustainable business”, and use their business as a force for good in the fight to save our home planet. 

🌎 Better Business for a Better Planet 

The definition of what’s good business is changing. It has to. The circumstances of the world demand it. 

Thankfully, there are businesses (and business people) like those I shared above who are helping to set this standard and redefine the expectations for how business can and should be done. 

Are there other businesses that you feel deserve a spot on this list? Who are they and why do you think they do? 

Let me know in the comments below!

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Welcome back to my Sustainable Business 101 series. 

In my last post, we covered why sustainable business even matters. 

And today, we’re talking definitions. 

The Problem with Not Defining Sustainable Business

Sustainability and sustainable business have been left widely undefined. 

This poses a potentially major issue. If these terms remain undefined, the standards on sustainability can be set by those with the largest budgets, infrastructure, and PR teams (remember the last email: brands can dictate culture). 

For example, we have Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, positioned as a leader on NPR for stakeholder capitalism.

Benioff is quoted in a section titled “Defining stakeholder capitalism,” saying that, in addition to their shareholders, the planet and the local homeless community in San Francisco are Salesforce’s stakeholders as well. 

Salesforce also didn’t pay a cent in federal income taxes in 2020, while earning $2.6 billion in profit. And Marc personally earned $26 million in total compensation that year.

Or we have Walmart, setting a stake in the ground by claiming that they will become a “regenerative company.”

This, after Walmart has had decades of labor disputes and scandals, from union-busting to employing sweatshop labor forces abroad.

So, who are we going to let define what a better, sustainable business is?

The Marc Benioffs of this world, who made $26 million in 2020 while his company evaded ANY federal tax liability?

And yes, companies like Salesforce have navigated the U.S. tax system legally, but:

1 – These companies have lobbied incessantly to make our tax rules as they are.

2 – The private sector argues to limit regulations and government intervention in markets, but at the same time they defer any accountability for our unequal tax system by claiming they are just playing by the given rules. 

You cannot switch positions to whatever is most convenient for you at the time. 

3 – It’s just absurd to take the position of defending companies making billions of dollars (in profits) at a time when the national (and in some cases global) discussion centers around how we pay for:

• Addressing the climate crisis.
• Providing parental leave for working families.
• Offering universal Pre-K.
• Increasing the number of Americans who have access to quality healthcare.

How can we allow those who have historically been the greatest exploiters of broken and convoluted systems to be in charge of reimagining those same systems for good? 

I just don’t believe it’s a good idea. It’s like putting arsonists in charge of the fire department. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for getting the biggest offenders to make changes; but I’m less interested in handing them a megaphone and inviting them to be the spokespeople. 

So, I believe the exercise of properly defining which businesses are sustainable is critically important.

Defining Sustainable Business for Objectivity’s Sake

We need to start here so that the terminology used in this conversation can be as objective as possible. 

This is so that we can first bring this conversation into as objective terms as possible. 

For example, a business might want to assess, say, its profit. 

A business is either profitable or not, right? 

Likewise, I believe a business should either be sustainable or not. 

If a business isn’t profitable, it needs to work toward being so. 

In the same way, if a business is determined unsustainable, it should work toward becoming sustainable as diligently and urgently as it would if it were not turning a profit. 

So, let’s get to defining. 

The Oxford dictionary defines “sustainable” as

“able to be maintained at a certain rate or level.” 

So, what does that mean for sustainable business? 

Well, we’ve hit a tipping point. For business “to be maintained at a certain rate or level,” a business must be leaving the world, the communities, the people and stakeholders it encounters as a result of its existence, better off. 

Our world needs repair. Our planet, our ecosystems, and our economies need to be restored. 

The models for economic growth that got us into this climate crisis and massive economic inequality won’t be the models that get us out of it. 

For business to be done, for the economy to function, they must have a positive impact on people and the planet. 

And so, to us at Grow Ensemble, for a business to be sustainable, it must:

• Leave the world around it better off, as part of its operation (not as some sort of supplemental charity or corporate social responsibility program).
• Have positive social and environmental impact at its core.
• Continue to be an advocate for change and standard setting in its industry by persistently redefining and reinventing the level of sustainability and positive impact that any one industry or sector can have. 
• Be kept accountable (not by itself) by working with and pursuing third-party certifications, external evaluations and auditing, etc. 
• Be radically open and transparent by knowing what its footprint is, being able to trace where and how its products were made, and making a diligent and consistent effort to share this information publicly.

It’s no longer fair that for a business to succeed (to profit), the planet and the people must sustain it.

In the next essay, we’re going to be sharing specific examples of exactly which businesses exemplify our definition of a sustainable business.

Until then, don’t hesitate with comments or questions. 

What points of my definition do you agree with? What might you contest? Leave a comment below.

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Welcome to my introductory series on Sustainable Business. 

Before I explain what is a sustainable business in another email to come, or show you examples of sustainable business in practice, we need to start with why sustainable business matters. 

My answers might not be the answers you’d expect.

The Race (isn’t) to Meet Consumer Demand

No, it doesn’t matter that businesses adopt “sustainable practices” so that they can meet consumer demand. 

Even though trends show consumers are caring more and more about how businesses are impacting the environment. 

That reason isn’t BIG enough. 

Businesses must be sustainable because we need to change consumer demand faster. 

We need to change culture faster. 

Because of the resources at their disposal, brands have the power to dictate culture.

A savvy advertising campaign, a visionary CEO…they can dictate what’s cool, what’s admirable. 

If businesses and business people can lead and say that it’s not okay to take home a profit unless the people and the planet are taken care of first… 

What could that do for our culture? 

What might be different about the state of our world if businesses said that THE PEOPLE and THE PLANET are more important than profit?

 What if we all truly began to believe that it wasn’t money that made the world go round’ but it was the planet and the people on it that spun it?

A World with (Truly) Sustainable Business

Business is not the solution for everything. 

But, business can be an incredible solution for many things. 

As much harm as business is doing, it’s equally possible that business could do good. Serious good.

And if a business can’t stop doing so much harm…should it exist?  

The truth of it is, we are in an “all hands on deck” situation. 

We aren’t acting on the climate crisis fast enough. 

Capitalism has amassed a great deal of resources for a few, but not for enough of us. There’s no reason that Elon Musk’s net worth should be near $300 Billion and Bezos’ per minute earnings well exceed what the average American earns in a year.

While at the same time, near 700 million people globally still live in “extreme poverty.” 

And so, it’s not just about business. It can’t be “just business.” 

Because the world…

just. 

can’t. 

take it. 

Perhaps if a business can’t turn a healthy profit without exploiting people and extracting from the planet, then maybe they just can’t be in business. 

And so who does that leave to “do business?”

That will be the subject of the next essay, where together we will define what is a sustainable business. 

Have any questions or comments? Leave a comment below and let me know. 

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In this post, you’re going to learn exactly what is a “Conscious Business.” You’ll also learn what a conscious business is not. 

And to do so, we’re going to hear from Meghan French Dunbar, a leader in the space of purpose-driven business. 

Meghan is the former CEO of Conscious Company Media, which was the nation’s leading media company dedicated to purpose-driven businesses and social enterprises.

And now she’s the co-founder of a new impact-driven venture called Womxn Led, which is an international community bringing womxn business leaders together to grow and thrive. 

Let’s dive in.

What Is the Meaning of “Conscious Business?” 

Conscious Business: A Definition

What is Conscious Leadership?

The conscious leader is someone who actually walks the talk, who has determined values and actually lives by them as someone who is conscious and aware of their actions on a daily basis, and who has the ability to respond thoughtfully rather than react. 

These were the kinds of ways in which we defined “conscious leadership” at Conscious Company Media, and these are the capacities possessed by the best conscious leaders that I ever came across. 

This would be people like Justin Rosenstein of Asana; Eileen Fisher of Eileen Fisher; Kevin Rutherford of Nuun: all people who exhibit fantastic leadership.

Stakeholder Business Model

And as a result of that, businesses have gotten away with murder. This is the reason why we have companies that pollute rivers and do terrible things to their workers. 

It’s because they’re saying they actually have a legal obligation to maximize the profit for their shareholders (at the cost of everything else). This has been replaced in the last 30 or so years with the idea of a stakeholder. A stakeholder is anyone or anything that your company’s actions affect.

And yes, your shareholders—your investors—are also stakeholders.

To understand the stakeholders affected by your business or organization you can make stakeholder maps and ask, “Who/what are all of the people and entities that our company’s actions directly affect?”

A conscious leader takes all stakeholders into account. And a conscious business really needs to be looking at its effect on every single stakeholder that the company contacts and attempt to have a positive impact on those stakeholders. Period.

Conscious Business = Purpose > Profit

That’s in their stated purpose!

And yes, they do make money as a result of their purpose.

But your purpose as a company cannot just be to make money. It must be something much bigger than that, a higher purpose beyond profit.

That’s what I came up with after talking to over 1,000 business leaders in my time at Conscious Company.

Misconceptions or Misunderstandings about Conscious Business

I think of the way that we just described a conscious business as a holistic lens. Every facet of the company isn’t “conscious” when we’re only talking about sustainability or a CSR department.

That is more just like a business with sustainability tacked onto the side. 

Yes, they can do wonderful things. I’m not poo-pooing sustainability departments. They’re fantastic. I know wonderful people who run incredible sustainability departments and CSR departments. 

But it doesn’t mean that the company itself is a conscious business. 

You can be doing incredible things for the environment and treating your employees like crap. You can have a wonderful kind of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and then maximize profit to the extent that you’re having negative externalities all over the place and doing terrible things to the environment.

I mean, there are all these kinds of trade-offs that you can make with sustainability departments. Monsanto has a sustainability department. Halliburton has a sustainability department. Those are not conscious businesses in my opinion.

Conscious Businesses Out in the World

What’s a company that you think models what it means to be a “conscious business?” 

Let me know with a comment below.

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This interview was edited and condensed for clarity, and originally hosted on the Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation Podcast from Grow Ensemble.

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